Formative Assessments By Elzbieta Indyk April 19, 2017

Formative Assessment True or False Formative assessment is a special kind of test or series of tests that teachers learn to use to find out what their students know. TRUE Formative assessment is an intentional learning process teachers engage in with their students to gather information during the learning process to improve achievement

Formative Assessment True or False 3.Formative assessment is a program that teachers adopt and add to what they already do. FALSE 4. Formative assessment is a philosophy of teaching and learning in which the purpose of assessing is to inform learning, not merely audit it. TRUE

Formative Assessment True or False 5. The following is an example of formative assessment: A high school teacher notes a troubling pattern on the exam for her World War II unit. Half of her students mistakenly identified Germany as the country that suffered the most lasting damage from the war. As a result, she plans to change the way she teaches the concept of lasting damage so that her future students can draw conclusions that are more accurate. FALSE

Clear Learning Targets Tuning Into Students’ Minds Defining Formative Assessment and The Five (5) Essential Components to Formative Assessment   Clear Learning Targets Tuning Into Students’ Minds Effective Questioning Immediate & Specific Feedback Peer & Self-Assessment Explore Online Resources, Articles, and Printables in all five (5) of the above areas

Definition “Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes.” Council of Chief State School Officers Formative Assessment for Students and Teachers

Formative Assessments Enhances learning during learning. Gains are the largest reported for an educational intervention (Black and Wiliam, 1998).

GOALS To provide evidence that will guide and inform daily instruction To actively involve all students in the teaching/learning process To narrow the achievement gap between low and high achievers

The Assessment–Instruction Process Pre – Assessment “finding out” Summative Assessment “making sure” Formative Assessment “checking in” “feedback” “student involvement”

Formative Assessments Where are you now? How can you get there? Where do you need to go?

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT Seven Strategies Where am I going? Provide a clear and understandable vision of the learning target Use examples and models of strong and weak work

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT Seven Strategies Where am I now? 3. Offer regular descriptive feedback. 4. Teach students to self-assess and set goals.

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT Seven Strategies How can I close the gap?? Design lessons to focus on one aspect of quality at a time. Teach students focused revision. 7. Engage students in self-reflection, and let them keep track of and share their learning.

Aspects of formative assessment Where the learner is going Where the learner is How to get there Teacher Clarify learning intentions Engineering effective discussions Providing feedback that moves learners on Peer Understand/ clarify criteria for success Activating students as instructional resources for one another Learner Understand criteria for success Activating students as owners of their own learning

Formative Assessment Strategies Conference Cooperative Learning Activities Demonstrations Exit Card Graphic Organizers “I Learned” Statements Interviews Journal Entry KWLs Learning Logs Oral Attitude Surveys Oral Presentations Peer Evaluations Problem Solving Activities Products Questioning Quiz Response Groups Self-Evaluations

Formative Assessment for Special Education Students Presentation Is a verbal demonstration of skill/knowledge and understanding. The child describes, shows and offers to answer questions about his/her task. Conference Is a one to one between the teacher an the student. The teacher will prompt and cue the student to determine the level of understanding and knowledge Interview Helps a teacher to clarify the level of understanding for a specific purpose, activity or learning concept. Observation Observing a student in the learning environment is a very powerful method to assess. It can also be the vehicle for the teacher to change or enhance a specific teaching strategy. Performance Task Is a learning task that the child will do while the teacher assesses his/her performance. Self-Assessment We always want our students/children to be able to identify their own strengths and weaknesses.

Practical techniques: feedback Comment-only grading Explicit reference to rubrics Suggestions on how to improve ‘Strategy cards’ ideas for improvement Not giving complete solutions Re-timing assessment (eg two-thirds-of-the-way-through-a-unit test) The research evidence suggests that feedback in terms of scores, grades and levels is unlikely to improve achievement, but that feeding back in terms of comments (whether written or verbal) is. This immediately raises the question “what kind of comments”, and although there is no specific research evidence on this point, it seems that, to be useful, a comment should cause thinking to take place. This feature of ‘mindfulness’ is one of the crucial features of effective formative assessment—effective learning involves having most of the students thinking most of the time. This notion of ‘mindfulness’ also gives some clues about what sort of marking is most helpful. Many teachers say that formative feedback is less useful in mathematics, because an answer is either wrong or right. But even where answers are wrong or right, we can still encourage students to think. For example, rather than marking answers right and wrong and telling the students to do corrections, teachers could, instead, feed back saying simply “Three of these ten questions are wrong. Find out which ones and correct them”. After all, we are often telling our students to check their work, but rarely help them develop the skills to do so. Other strategies that are useful are focused gradin—ie grading a particular piece of work for one aspect (such as sentence structure, expression or spelling) rather than trying to correct everything. This is particularly useful if the comments can be related directly to the assessment criteria for the work. Of course, it is very difficult for feedback to function formatively at the end of a unit so rather than an ‘end-of-unit test’ it may be more useful to have a ‘two-thirds-of-the-way-through-a-unit test’. Those students who have understood something can then help those who haven’t. Many teachers sometimes worry that such strategies may hold back abler students, but the research evidence suggests that it is the students who give help who benefit most from such peer-tutoring. While this may not accelerate more able students through the curriculum, it does lead to better long-term retention.

Practical techniques: peer and self-assessment Students assessing their own/peers’ work with scoring guides, rubrics or exemplars two stars and a wish Training students to pose questions Identifying group weaknesses Self-assessment of understanding Red/green discs Traffic lights Smiley faces Post-it notes End-of-lesson students’ review Again, most of these strategies are self-explanatory. With ‘traffic-lights’ the teacher identifies a small number of objectives for the lesson (perhaps only one), which are made as clear as possible to the students at the beginning of the lesson. At the end of the lesson, students are asked to indicate their understanding of each objective by a green, yellow or red circle, according to whether they feel they have achieved the objective fully, partially or not at all. This provides useful feedback to the teacher at two levels—to see if there are parts of the lesson that it would be worth re-doing with the whole class, but also to get feedback about which students would particularly benefit from individual support (one technique here has been to ask ambers and greens to work together, while the teacher works with the reds). However, the real benefit of such a system is that it forces the student to reflect on what she or he has been learning. Other teachers have used ‘smiley faces’ which have the advantage, if drawn in pencil, of being modifiable when the student is more confident about their understanding. The other strategy that may require explanation is that of ‘end-of-lesson’ reviews. The idea here is that at the beginning of the lesson, one student is appointed as a ‘rapporteur’ for the lesson. The teacher then teaches a whole-class lesson on some topic, and finishes the lesson ten or fifteen minutes before the end of the lesson. The student rapporteur then gives a summary of the main points of the lesson, and tries to answer any remaining questions that students in the class may have. If he or she can’t answer the questions, then the rapporteur asks members of the class to help out. What is surprising is that teachers who have tried this out have found that students are queuing up to play the role of reporter, provided this is started at the beginning of the school year, or even better, when students are new to the school.

Practical techniques: sharing learning expectations Explaining learning objectives at start of lesson/unit Criteria in students’ language Posters of key words to talk about learning eg describe, explain, evaluate Planning/writing frames Annotated examples of different standards to ‘flesh out’ assessment rubrics (e.g. lab reports) Opportunities for students to design their own tests Most of these strategies are self-explanatory. Planning and writing frames provide a structure to help students develop a response. While some teachers see such frames as constricting, for most students they provide valuable ‘scaffolding’ for their answers.

Formative Assessment: SOME FINAL THOUGHTS Formative Assessment: Refers to what happens on a daily basis in the classroom Provides teachers with information about specific next instructional steps for students: Assessment Drives Instruction. Students know where they are at instructionally and where they need to go On-going assessment provides continual feedback that helps students progress over time

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT This Type of Assessment is NOT about accountability… it is about GETTING BETTER!!

The greatest value in formative assessment lies in teachers and students making use of results to improve real-time teaching and learning at every turn. (Stephen Chappuis and Jan Chappuis

Formative Assessments Elzbieta Indyk April 19, 2017